Coalition forces hit Information Ministry building

PM Archive - Wednesday, 26 March , 2003 18:10:00

Reporter: Paul McGeough

MARK COLVIN: First we'll go to Baghdad, the centre of all this attention, obviously, and where some residents have been talking about Acts of God today, after a massive dust and sand storm held back the American ground onslaught which many of them had been expecting on the city itself.

But that near zero visibility which stopped the tanks and infantry did little to hold back the bombs. They fell again overnight, and this time the target was Iraqi television and the country's information infrastructure.

I spoke a short while ago to Herald and Age Correspondent Paul McGeough, and I asked him if Iraqi television was still off the air.

PAUL MCGEOUGH: Television is off the air. It was a powerful strike. I haven't had a chance to get down there yet, I'm about to head down there as soon as I finish talking to you, but there were a series of heavy explosions just before dawn, and when I got up from the few hours sleep that I managed to get, there was a large plume of black smoke rising from about where the Information Ministry building is.

We were fully warned that it was likely to happen last night, and so we fully expected the Information Ministry and the Al Rashid Hotel to take a hit last night. It seems that the Information Ministry has taken one, or certainly the television annex to it. The Al Rashid is still standing.

MARK COLVIN: Obviously it controls television, but how important is the Information Ministry within the structure of Saddam Hussein's regime?

PAUL MCGEOUGH: Oh it's essential, it's essential. I mean, it's the key propaganda tool. Impoverished and all that this country is, everybody has access to a TV, and it's the prime tool of propaganda. I mean, the Americans in particular will be pleased to see it gone, given their anger at the use of the footage of captured troops and pilots.

They've been very angry about that, as you're well aware, and there was as much revenge there as there was the start of what I think is going to be a series of attacks on another layer of targets. If you go back to last Friday night, all the targets were key symbols of Saddam's power; they were all to do with Saddam, the man.

I think now we will see a layer of targets being taken out that are about his government and the administration of the country. Both layers of targets and the punishment of them, serve to separate in the people's minds themselves from regime, and what they're doing is they're sort of standing back in relative safety, and that's in no way to diminish the civilian death toll already.

But the majority of the people, remember this is a city of 5 million people, the majority are able to stand back in relative safety and ask themselves, well, it's the regime that's being punished, not me, maybe I can go along with this, as some of them indeed are doing.

MARK COLVIN: Now, if you are right then, what would be the targets that might be next? The Information Ministry is obviously very visible, but would the Interior Ministry… I think there are five separate internal spying networks; what kind of targets will be next?

PAUL MCGEOUGH: Well, security intelligence are big ones; they've already been touched up on Friday night, some of them. There are many, many more of them to go. Interior is one, Planning is another.

The Planning Ministry is surrounded by buildings just on the northern flank of the presidential compound; that series of buildings has been pummelled, the Americans come back to it almost every night.

None of us can find out, here, precisely what their interest is, but there has been some suggestion that [inaudible] the Republican Guard, but they've been quite determined to get those buildings.

The Al Rashid Hotel is a particular target, mainly because on one level it's the Government's meet-and-greet centre, which you'd think the Americans might want to keep as an administrative headquarters themselves.

It's a compounded building, there's three helipads, it would be perfect for them, but deep in the basement of it, there is said to be a secret communications base for Saddam's, sort of, underground network.

MARK COLVIN: Now, the Americans have been indicating some dismay, in the last couple of days, at the effectiveness of Saddam's techniques of harrying them, and particularly hitting them in the flanks, as their supply column extends and extends; is there some rejoicing about that in Baghdad?

PAUL MCGEOUGH: There is, and I mean this is one of the problems of having moved north so fast. Because they've come north so fast, and because they've sort of flanked rather than entered cities, the result is that the US supply lines are exposed. Now, they're about 90 kilometres short of Baghdad at the moment, let alone it's only a matter of days before they come face-to-face with the Republican Guard on the ground.

But my estimate is that it’s probably going to be about two weeks before we get any sort of engagement in a ground war, if that – the reason being, that the spearhead of the advance won't in any way have enough supplies, won't have enough men, won't have anywhere near enough machines to engage the five divisions of the Republican Guard surrounding Baghdad.

So they're going to have to haul all of that up from Kuwait, and that's going to take time. What you'll see in the meantime is the continued pummelling of the Republican Guard lines, in the hope of breaking them, breaking their air defences, breaking their command and control structure.

MARK COLVIN: Is the Iraqi Government continuing to insist that it has complete control of Basra?

PAUL MCGEOUGH: Well, Basra, to me Basra's probably the focus of the story today. I think it's fraught. Yesterday we had the start of what seems to be a popular uprising against Saddam, it has reduced the city to a very dangerous three-cornered contest.

You've got the British Marines on the north of the city, lobbing artillery in against the Saddam loyalists who control Basra for the regime. You've got to remember that Basra is a predominantly Shiite city, the Shiites are not well pleased with Saddam.

You've got the Saddam loyalists in the city lobbing artillery back at the British, but also into the northern suburbs of Basra, where the Shiites' uprising is said to taking place. Now, this is the thing that the Americans would love, at a purely strategic level; it would mean that Saddam would be fighting on two fronts.

If you do get a revolt in Basra, the chances are it will very quickly be spread to the other Shiite cities, and in particular to the Shrine cities of Kabala and Najaf. If that happens in the south, the Kurds in the north will find it very difficult to resist starting their own uprising, but if that happens, Saddam will respond with such brutality that the civilian casualties could be unbearable.

MARK COLVIN: And finally, Paul, just on the dust storm; when you look out of your window, is the dust storm still there, or is the worst of it over?

PAUL MCGEOUGH: The worst of it is over. The weather predictions yesterday were that this would last into Wednesday. It's already lifting and clearing, it's almost normal right now, to the extent that anything's normal in this place.

But when I looked out this morning, I was just stunned by how reminiscent the streets of Baghdad were of Lower Manhattan on September 11. Everything then was coated in white dust; here the only difference this morning is the colour, it's beige. It's a beige-on-beige monochrome.